Chrissie steals another langoustine. ‘These are totally delicious. I’m going to reek of garlic.’
‘We’ll reek together,’ I say and really wish I hadn’t. ‘So does Mary have the kind of illness that you’re studying?’
Chrissie lays down the langoustine husk and sucks her fingers. ‘Sorry,’ she grins and peers at me over chunky-framed glasses that are way too big for her face. ‘When I looked through Mary’s file, there was nothing to suggest that she had any actual pathological disease at all.’
‘Vaso something. Some kind of dementia that showed up on her MRI scan results.’ And we both chant it together:
But there weren’t any MRI scan results
.
‘You don’t mean vascular dementia, do you?’ Chrissie’s tucking into the bands of squid heaped under a drizzle of scarlet sauce that nearly explodes my mouth. ‘I love Thai food, don’t you?’
‘Oh yes!’ And if my lips weren’t still tingling, I would lean across the table and kiss her right on the mouth. ‘Oh yes to both of those, I mean. Wonderful food and vascular dementia. That was it. That was Carlyle’s reason for having Mary hospitalised.’
Chrissie shrugs, more interested in the free lunch than solving my mystery. ‘It’s very odd, don’t you think, that he offered to pay for Mary’s private treatment. The Lawns is incredibly expensive.’
I pull a face. In every way, she’s right. But she doesn’t know the relationship between Julia and David. It’s odd on every count. ‘Strange indeed, although that’s what’s happened.’
‘But David Carlyle doesn’t seem to be paying the bill, does he? His name’s not on the account.’ This I already know. ‘And neither does there seem to be a need for treatment for vascular dementia. Not if Mary Marshall doesn’t have it, and especially not at The Lawns, which, as we all know, deals purely with psychiatric patients.’ Another mouthful stifles her next suggestion. ‘What about getting Mrs Marshall another MRI scan? A second opinion?’
Hands up, I know she’s right. I stuff my fingers into the napkin, wiping off sauce and garlic. ‘And round and round we go.’
‘Suck them,’ Chrissie says, winking behind the thick lenses of her spectacles so that her eyes look like giant clams. It’s then that I know she’ll do anything I want.
The boat stinks. Diesel, river sludge and stale spaghetti bolognese from last night’s micro-meal blend together to make a perfect scent for my mood. An expensive lunch and Chrissie still hasn’t given up the file.
‘It’s not much,’ I tell her. Excuses would be futile. I’m a man living alone. There is a certain expectation of slobbishness. ‘But it’s home.’
‘It’s amazing,’ she says. ‘You should see my flat. Four straight walls within four straight walls within four . . . You get the picture. This is so . . .’
‘Grotty?’
‘Romantic.’
I must be careful. Remember Nadine’s words. Eyes open. ‘Tea?’ Julia would want tea now.
‘Sure, but I can’t stay long.You can take a look at the file while I drink tea but then I have to go.’ She says it as if I’m a naughty schoolboy allowed to have a couple of sweets. Only a couple, mind.
I jiggle the kettle. Just enough water. I try to light the stove. ‘Sorry. Out of gas. Juice?’ My plan to buy time is not going well.
‘Really, I’m fine. Take a quick look at the file and then I’ll be off.’ She’s nervous about handing it over, I can tell.
‘Why not leave it with me? It’s no trouble to drop it back at the hospital in the morning.You can trust me, you know, I’m a lawyer.’ I grin and hope that Chrissie sees the joke. She just stands still, looking worried.
‘I’ll wait.’ She settles down on the single chair by the fold-down table and taps away at her mobile phone. I end up dropping on to the beanbag with Mary Marshall’s file resting on my legs, wondering how I’ll ever make sense of all the medical jargon. A bottle of wine at lunchtime, even to an experienced connoisseur like me, tests my alertness score. But not so much that I can’t whip up a plan to harvest the file for my own private use. A manila file is a manila file. My boat is littered with them from the office. Clients work their way into my private life any way they can.
‘Nature calls,’ I say. Chrissie doesn’t look up from her phone or notice that I take Mary’s notes into the tiny washroom along with Mr A. Barrett’s file on a case he’s sure to lose, whatever I do. I swap the contents around and tuck Mary’s papers behind the shower curtain before returning to the cabin.
‘You know, I fancy some fresh air. Do you want to sit out on the deck with me while I read through this?’ I wave Barrett’s file in the air. Chrissie thinks it’s Mary’s. This is going to take some doing, but I’m up for it.
‘Oh that would be nice. I can watch the moorhens.’ Chrissie wraps her scarf around her neck.
Perfect, I think, leading the way. As we mount the slippery deck, I hold my breath and waste no time in falling overboard with the file clutched to my chest. The last thing I see as I go under is Chrissie’s mouth open, screaming, as she lunges for the precious file. Then I screw up my eyes in the murky water, doing exactly the opposite to what Nadine told me.
MARY
When I opened my eyes, David was standing in front of me, accepting my offer to dance. Pure pleasure. Pure excitement. He was forbidden fruit and this was the next best thing.
‘Where’s Jonathon?’ I asked, glancing around the hut. In the seconds that I had closed my eyes, it was as if my entire life had changed. I laughed provocatively, nervously. I was alone with David. His body appeared twisted and enlarged in strange places, as if I was looking at him in one of those fairground mirrors. Sense didn’t tell me it was the lude. Sense had long gone.
‘He walked back to the party,’ he said. I think that’s what he said. Didn’t he want to play any more? I asked, but nothing came out.
‘Can you dance the quickstep, then?’ Some things are clear. Others are as if they have been dipped in melted toffee. I felt as if I had lost my bones. ‘Have you got them?’
David frowned. ‘Got what?’
‘My bones.’ And then I heard my silly words echo down a long corridor that spanned the entire stretch of my life. David took hold of me and we danced. There was no music. ‘I feel sick,’ I confessed.
‘That’ll be all the booze you’ve had,’ David whispered, but then handed over his hip flask. I wanted to tell him he was bad; that he should be looking after me, but when I opened my mouth to protest, nothing came out. I was on the inside of a merry-go-round, watching out-of-control horses gallop past. David and I were suddenly riding the horses, the pair of us speeding up, everything spinning faster and faster. I wanted to tell him that I loved him.
‘What you need to do,’ David suggested with heavy eyes, ‘is take another lude. It will cancel out the alcohol, for sure.’ He plucked another pill from the envelope and popped it between my lips. ‘Steady, baby,’ he crooned. ‘Down it goes.’ I relaxed and dropped on to the sofa. He would look after me. He was going to be a doctor.
Minutes became hours, or the other way round. The rain beat on the tin roof of the hut. I remember because it sounded the same as the beating inside my head. Nothing was real, yet everything was so vibrant, I could hardly bear it. Even my clothes became too much of an irritant to my sensitive skin.
‘Undress me,’ I said, slurring. David looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language.
Undress me
, I screamed, pulling at my clothes.
It hurts
. But it wasn’t a scream at all. It was a useless cry in my head that no one heard. I rubbed at the layers of my new dress and pulled at the shoulder straps. Then I started laughing. I wasn’t wearing any clothes. I was already completely naked. Wasn’t I?
Mary, are you OK?
Someone was talking to me.Was it my mother bending over me, stroking my brow? How would she know where I was?
I’m fine
, I replied, wondering if she could hear me.
I’m just taking this sweet, sweet trip on ludes
.
David was right. It felt good. Better than good. Nothing bothered me while everything ripped me apart. I knew I could fly. I wasn’t Mary Marshall any more, and that, for the first time in my life, made me feel special.
Mary, are you sure you’re all right?
Perhaps it was my father, pleased as punch to see his daughter in such esteemed company.
A doctor, Mary. My, you are doing well for yourself
. But it wasn’t my father.
Dad?
I asked into the void, helpless as a baby. Then everyone I’d ever known zoomed around me like colours on a spinning top. My eyes stretched wide as an album of my life flashed through the rickety shed. They all left their message of sympathy; all joined in the dance beat out by the rain; all screwed up their faces in shock.
Have we been washed away?
I heard myself ask, but no one replied.
Then I was struck by pain.
It took a hold of my heart and my mind and my body in equal measure and darkness pushed over my face. The first sting fell on my cheek. It came and went so quickly, it was only when the next one arrived that I remembered the first. I touched my face, smarting from the slap.
‘David?’ I asked. The fear was too slow coming. I simply didn’t believe it.
Suddenly my neck was cracked back against the dirty sofa and I had to open my mouth wide so the skin on my throat wouldn’t split. I screamed but nothing came out.
‘Da . . . vid . . . no . . .’ Fresh air whipped against my stomach as David’s clever doctor hands ripped chiffon and lace from me that I already thought had been removed. I was confused. Time and reality skidded around me. I sent my arms to fight him off but they lay lifeless on the floor. I laughed.
I can’t feel my arms
. All I could see was the cobwebbed wood of the hut’s ceiling. A single bulb hung darkly from a central beam. The only light in my world was from the brightness of David’s pills.
‘Jonathon, Jonathon.’ I called out for help. I tried to lift my head, but the weight of it was too great. ‘Help me, Jonathon.’ No one, yet everyone, replied. Even the confusion was confusing.
Jonathon’s gone
. . .
I vomited and coughed, choking for my life. Suddenly I was on my front, face pressed to the musty boards in the stain of my own sick. David was thumping my back. He was trying to help me. He’d seen me choking and was trying to help me. A moment’s lucidity. Maybe he wasn’t going to hurt me at all.
‘Please stop,’ I begged, but the taste of dust and grit choked me again. Then there was a great weight on my back and a pressure on my head so that my cheek was scuffed into the dirty floor.
Someone, help me
. . .
Then my life split in two. My body was torn apart, every neatly stitched seam of my soul slashed to tatty threads. The size of him, the heat of him, the smell of him as he forced himself inside my body time and time again, the very core of him jetting into the very centre of me as I fell in and out of consciousness. I screamed for breath; screamed for help, but nobody heard. My nails scratched at splinters in the floor as David stole the life from me – each thrust a year eroded.
David. My doctor. My friend. I thought he loved me.
Then silence, the relief as he rolled off my body. I heard distant thunder, vibrating through the wood of the hut and into my bones. It was over. It seemed to have taken just seconds yet stretched from the beginning of time.
Surely it was all a mistake?
I vomited again, the vile taste a welcome wash to the sawdust in my mouth.
But fear was waiting for me, whipping me senseless again as I saw David’s knife lying on the floor across the room – a discarded weapon, glinting, calling to him. Discarded but not forgotten. I shook with fear. I tried to speak but nothing came out.
‘Shh,’ David whispered, leaning over me, watching me die, if not in body then in spirit. ‘Don’t talk. Just don’t speak. Shh. Keep quiet, Mary . . .’
It was the last thing I heard before I passed out.
JULIA
‘My father called?’ I laugh to cover a line of indelible sadness; a lifetime of making excuses to my friends at school, playing make-believe with myself that I had a dad. Truth is, I’m fine about it now. What you never had, you don’t miss, right? ‘I don’t think it would have been. Could have been,’ I add, baffled, excited, frightened. What if it
was
?
I let out another nervous laugh but only because of what she must be thinking. Did he walk out because of you? As a kid, dazzled by my mother’s silence on the matter, that’s what I always assumed. My father hated me and walked out on us. Mum couldn’t bring herself to discuss it.
‘Well maybe not your father then, but some older guy left an urgent message for you to call. It wasn’t Murray.’ Ali crunched into an apple, oblivious to the spark of pain she had caused. She handed me a slip of paper. ‘And it certainly wasn’t Alex’s little voice.’ She winked. ‘OK. I’d better get on. Fancy a drink this Friday?’ Ali headed up the school’s admin team. We’d all be sunk without her.
‘Why not,’ I say. ‘I deserve a bit of fun. Perhaps Murray can have the kids overnight and we can, you know, paint the town red.’ I felt silly saying it.
‘You look like you need it. We’ll eat first and then . . .’
But I don’t wait to hear what Friday night could hold. When I see David’s number jotted on the message pad, I gather my bag and scuttle from Ali’s office like it’s on fire.
In a quiet corner of the playground, my coat hunched around my neck, five rings seem like five hundred. ‘David?’ I’m standing still but breathless, trying not to shiver but failing. ‘What’s . . . what’s going on?’ I hardly dare ask if he’s out.
‘Julia,’ he says, and his voice is swift and smooth, like a bird. I glance up at the sky.
‘Are you . . . are you really . . .’ I can’t say it. For these few seconds, there is hope. More hope than I’ve had for weeks, and if I’m right, then there’s a chance my life will be allowed to heal. There will be hope for Mum again, hope for Alex and Flora to have some steadiness in their lives, and hope for me to rebuild mine. I blurt it out. ‘David, where are you? Are you free?’ Stuffed inside my gloves, my fingers automatically cross and I screw up my eyes as if I can’t stand to see his reply.